Stevie‘s review of The Warehouse by Rob Hart
Dystopian Thriller published by Crown 20 Aug 19
Most people are of the opinion that near monopolies in any type of business are a bad idea, although that seemingly stops few from taking advantage of the perceived positive combination of lower prices and greater convenience offered by certain big retailers over small stores. Fortunately, from my point of view, we’re not yet in a position where our choices are too severely limited in what we buy from where. There’s always the worry that the balance might tip until we all suffer in (mostly) unforeseen ways, and that’s what has happened in this near-future dystopia, where one company provides the solutions to all consumers’ needs and is also the only source of employment and affordable accommodation for a vast number of ordinary workers. Against their better judgement, Paxton and Zinnia are about to become two of those workers, assuming they can survive the selection process at Cloud.
Cloud is the brainchild of Gibson Wells, a company which can deliver everything and anything by drone to consumers across the United States from a vast network of warehouses – or MotherClouds – in which goods are handpicked by employees, who live on the premises, along with all the various technical, security, service, and management teams required to keep the facilities running. Now Gibson is dying and is attempting to visit as many MotherClouds as he can, while the public awaits his announcement as to who will succeed him as CEO of Cloud. Paxton, meanwhile, is a former prison guard, who was briefly successful in marketing an invention of his own, until Cloud forced him to lower his price to the point where his business was no longer viable. Running out of options and with nowhere to live, Paxton joins a busload of other desperate people hoping to get hired at their closest MotherCloud.
On his journey, Paxton meets Zinnia, who tells him she is a former teacher in similar circumstances to Paxton’s. Changes to the school system mean that fewer staff are required and so she’s hoping for a job with Cloud. That’s not the real story. Zinnia is an industrial espionage expert, charged with finding out just what Cloud is really all about and what lies behind the discrepancy behind the company’s apparent green energy credentials, since the available evidence just doesn’t add up.
As Zinnia and Paxton move through the recruitment process, start their assigned roles, and begin a relationship with each other, we learn through following them, and reading Gibson’s public blog posts, the true horror behind Cloud. The secret of what goes into the burgers is bad enough (not quite on a level with Soylent Green, but very close), but the regimentation of people’s lives within Cloud and the restrictions and deprivations faced by ordinary people outside, as well as the manipulation of consumer’s emotions and fears in the wider world, is a more subtle warning of what might be to come (for us as well as for them).
This was a very thought-provoking novel. The author was very careful to make clear that Cloud is not quite based on any one big employer in our current reality, while also pushing home truths many would like to avoid about how cheap, readily and rapidly available, goods can only come about at a detriment to the welfare of others. I also liked the subtle references to past authors’ concepts of seemingly civilised dystopias. Definitely a book that will give up more revelations on subsequent readings.
Grade: A
Summary:
Paxton never thought he’d be working for Cloud, the giant tech company that’s eaten much of the American economy. Much less that he’d be moving into one of the company’s sprawling live-work facilities.
But compared to what’s left outside, Cloud’s bland chainstore life of gleaming entertainment halls, open-plan offices, and vast warehouses… well, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s more than anyone else is offering.
Zinnia never thought she’d be infiltrating Cloud. But now she’s undercover, inside the walls, risking it all to ferret out the company’s darkest secrets. And Paxton, with his ordinary little hopes and fears? He just might make the perfect pawn. If she can bear to sacrifice him.
As the truth about Cloud unfolds, Zinnia must gamble everything on a desperate scheme—one that risks both their lives, even as it forces Paxton to question everything about the world he’s so carefully assembled here.
Together, they’ll learn just how far the company will go… to make the world a better place.
Set in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business–and who will pay the ultimate price.
Read an excerpt.
